Telling your story with social media

Whether you have business or personal stories to share, the best time to reach your audience is when they are active and using the tools. So many things are posted every hour that a post will quickly get lost in a flood of messages and be missed if people are not active for a long period of time. Consequently, timing is an important element of social media strategy.

It used to be said that the three most important things in business are Location – Location – Location. That is not true in the global world of social media and these days it might be said that the most important things are Timing – Timing – Timing. Below is an interesting graphic with guidelines about when to post in various social media to get the greatest level of engagement. The source is on the bottom of the graphic.

Share your stories when you can most effectively meet your intended audience. Of course, these times just offer guidelines and don’t account for different time zones. You might have to post your message to reach several time zones. Also, it would make sense to try to asses the validity with your target audience, which might have different usage patterns than the average.

More tomorrow – probably between 1 and 4 pm AST.

What do you think of the times indicated? I was surprised that Twitter traffic fades so early in the afternoon – I would have expected it to be busy late afternoon and early evening. I seem to get lots of tweets at that time of day.

Do you have favorite times that you have found especially effective for your personal or business messages? What tips do you have about timing of your social media postings?